The Illusion of Community Sentences

The UK have always been forward thinking and proactive when it comes to comforting the human condition in medicine and trying to alleviate the suffering in the halls of incarceration. It must have been difficult to accept the notion that — over the last four years as “Community Sentences” rose as a diversionary tactic to reduce the prison population — the incarceration rate rose just as well.

New community sentences introduced four years ago are failing to cut prison populations, according to a report published today. The study from the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King’s College also found that some magistrates were confused about the system of community orders and suspended sentence orders that was introduced in April 2005 in an effort to reduce prison numbers.

Some probation officers said the sentences had no deterrent effect, with some offenders regarding them as a softer option than a jail term. Richard Garside, the director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, said the study showed the new orders were being breached more often than the previous regime of community sentences, largely because probation officers were told to enforce them more rigorously.

Should we just give up right now and accept the fact that, the world over, all nations will continue to have to keep building more and more prisons as the world population increases at an alarming speed while the death rate reduces?

Is the sustained rise of criminal element the punishment the rest of us must pay for fewer World Wars, less famine, better longevity, and supreme healthcare inoculations?

With less of us dying, the worst of us thrive in the midst of the ongoing goodness.

As terrible as it sounds, Gordon, the criminal element in America is more poor than uneducated and it is usually the poor that die of ill health younger, serve in wars as front line troops and they don’t have the means for elder care. Most of those examples lead to an early death.
While the tide of national healthcare programs raise all ships, that also includes a healthier criminal element who are able to survive longer and propagate more dastardly deeds upon us all.
It’s a vicious circle of undesirable trade offs that, it seems, appear to only end in the building of more prisons.